Wisdom is Supreme

“Wisdom is supreme; therefore get wisdom. Though it cost all you have, get understanding”. Proverbs 4:7

This week our Development team received wisdom. It cost us three long days away from our families and the office, but it was worth every minute.

Actually, it maybe the best 3 days of any professional investment I’ve made in a long time. Not because of the subject matter – yes development and fundraising are incredibly important for ministries like SpringHill – but because of the wisdom of our seminar leader Bill McConkey of McConkey Johnston International.

Bill has been a development professional for 50 years as well as a local church pastor for over 40. He sits on boards of well-known and significant ministries while continuing both his consulting and pastoral work. Bill embodies wisdom.

Which had me thinking, why is there such a serious lack appreciation in our culture for true wisdom and its sources?

First we need to understand wisdom. Wisdom is the accumulated learning and knowledge one has gathered from personal experience or the experience of others. The two key words are “accumulated” and “experience”, both of which can only happen over a long period of time, such as a… life time. By implication then, the only truly wise people walking the earth are those who’ve been around a long time and those who have learned from them.

Which is why our culture doesn’t value true wisdom, we don’t value the people who have it. There’s a bias against older people because they’re not always “current”. Bill McConkey doesn’t own a computer, thus never does email. So it would be easy to dismiss things Bill has to say, but oh, what a mistake that would be (could it be that Bill’s wiser because he doesn’t have email?).

So beyond all that I learned about fundraising this week I also reminded of my need to be with and around wise people, those who’ve traveled life for a long time, because “wisdom is supreme”.